A Nightmare On Lemon StreetA defendant on trial for attempted murders in an OC theater blamed the devil. The jury told him to go to hell

Unlike private defense attorneys, public defenders can’t pick their clients. If they could, Orange County public defender Erica Gambale might not have represented attempted-murder suspect Steven Walter Robinson. On Feb. 24, 2008, Robinson—a 25-year-old Anaheim man obsessed with sexually deviant serial killers—used a knife and a hammer to ambush two unarmed strangers in a public place you would assume was safe from horrific violence: the inside of an upscale, suburban movie theater.

“When I got the case, I kind of really freaked-out,” Gambale told Robinson’s jury of six men and six women in her Sept. 28 closing argument. “I’m not going to lie about it.”

Evan Yarbrough

According to Gambale, her husband, prosecutor Keith Bogardus, is “a huge movie buff.” The couple enjoyed attending the opening nights of films—until Robinson’s unprovoked assault inside the AMC Theater on Lemon Street in Fullerton. The crime gave Gambale anxiety. Instead of focusing on the films, she analyzed other moviegoers. She didn’t like anyone to sit behind her and repeatedly demanded to change seats.

“I was nuts in there,” said Gambale. “But that was before I ever spoke to my client and the doctors and discovered the truth.”

The truth, according to the public defender, is that Robinson shouldn’t be feared. His actions were understandable in light of his consumption of whiskey and 10 to 12 grams of illegal psychedelic mushrooms for seven hours leading up to the crime, argued Gambale. But she also took the intoxication defense a step further. She claimed that her inebriated client believed that the low-budget horror flick he was watching had sent him telepathic messages, urging him to attack.

One online critic aptly described The Signal as a “bloody banquet of excessive, tasteless gore.” In the early minutes of the movie, a crazed man chops up restrained, screaming women in a back yard. Before Robinson’s real-life attack, an odd, distorted image appeared on the screen accompanied by an annoying, warped, bass-heavy sound—the signal for the actors to go crazy and kill.

“Mr. Robinson fully believed his hallucinations were real,” Gambale explained. “His actions were in response to voices he heard. He was experiencing an altered reality. . . . He couldn’t have known the consequences of his actions.”

Besides, she argued, Robinson was a sympathetic character: a lonely guy who struggled throughout his life with a weight problem, craved attention, fell into the dark world of substance abuse as an escape and genuinely felt sorry for “any pain” he’d inflicted on his fellow moviegoers. Given that Gambale didn’t dispute Robinson committed the acts (she couldn’t—DNA at the scene made him a trillion-to-one suspect), she asked jurors to vote for a lesser crime, attempted voluntary manslaughter, because he never intended to harm anyone.

Deputy District Attorney Andrew Katz wasn’t having it. “Do not be fooled,” he told jurors. “The defense is giving you a red herring. . . . It’s not the drugs kicking in and telling him to go kill. That’s his nature.”

Katz revealed that Robinson collected books on serial killers, including BTK: Bind, Torture, Kill; chose an online screen identity of “psychokiller666”; belonged to online groups such as “World Famous Serial Killers”; and committed burglaries. (The jury wasn’t told about the rest of his extensive rap sheet.)

“There is substantial evidence that provides a very revealing window into the dark, distorted and dangerous mind of this defendant,” Katz said.

Indeed, Robinson’s MySpace account was a treasure trove of evidence. A homepage image resembling the defendant morphed into the Devil. His online status was set as, “Steven puts a knife right in you.” He listed his interests as “money, drugs, murder, sex, torture and death.” He hailed movies such as Natural Born Killers and American Psycho. He prominently displayed a pentagram.

But it was his pre-stabbing online writings that really put frowns on the faces of jurors. Those statements included:

• “The time for killing is once again at hand! No one is safe. Only your tortured screams will resurrect my dying soul.”

• “Murder, kill in the name of satanic revolution. Let it begin with you. Kill! Kill and die; leave the signs.”

• And, his most succinct message, six weeks before his stabbing rampage: “Kill, kill, kill.”

Gambale blasted Katz for “maligning” Robinson based on the books he read, the music he played, the movies he liked, “role-playing” messages he sent and the clothes (all black) he hung in his closet. She asked jurors to “protect the scary, protect the weird” and don’t render a verdict “based on fears.”